Research Facility Chiron

Thanks for the feedback Poplava. This was the winning contest entry for Oasiscircle's Game in a Week contest in August 2012.

Congrats!

I agree about the story text being too much. I'm working on keeping it short and sweet. I'm also considering getting a voice actor to do voice overs for people who might be too lazy to read even 3 or 4 lines of text.

:)

I need to readjust spawning timers so that the zombies aren't waiting for you just as the first door opens. Perhaps provide a couple empty rooms (without spawns) to let the player get comfortable with the controls. Pick up the gun, ammo, and flash light across several rooms instead of coming equipped so you become aware of your inventory.

- Not overly terrible if you can hear them (which you can) and you can see them.

I'm working on making the flashlight grow dimmer as you run out of energy. I might make it play some sound if it turns off the flashlight from running out of energy.

For me, flash light system is great as long as I know I have one and I know it needs to recharge. It takes some "what the heck" moments to figure it out.

I'm also working on making the mission objectives more obvious. Pretty much: Keep the story text short and concise and make the objective HUD markers more obvious and easy to notice.

Easier said than done but a simple tutorial that walks you through the basics with a voice over leading you along. "The power is out in this corridor, turn on your flash light by hitting F". Then go on to say "ok, we made it. Now turn off your flashlight to conserve and restore the charge".

About flashlight auto-on, I was hoping that H for Help was pretty obvious.

Nothing obvious about H being help. I've played more games where H wasn't the help.

There's text indicating it on the lobby screen. I'm not sure how to make it more obvious (for people who don't know controls).

Finding help was never an issue. Not sure how finding help applies to my feedback though. I just didn't know the battery died on the flash light.

Additionally, there are flares in the starting room that can be used and carried by the players, in case there's a group of players and one wants to carry a flare for others to not need flashlights. This kind of makes flashlight auto-on at start a little inappropriate.

So, when I started, I saw the stuff there but had no idea what to do with the flares. Should I swap them out for my flashlight?!? I think not. Is this some obvious thing I should pick up or is it an option!? No idea. So I left them. I also wondered why there would be ammo available in the starting room when I'm already maxed. Clearly I could come back but as a first time user, I'm sitting there walking over the stuff going what the heck do I need to do with this stuff?

About the autostart for singleplayer: If all players click the checkmark on their player panel (so that all of the checkmarks are green), the start timer will reduce to 10 seconds. This also applies for singleplayer, just tick your checkmark when you're ready.

I only noticed the tiny check mark when I was near the 10 second mark so I didn't notice if it changed the timer for me. It's not obvious at least for me it wasn't. I can be slow sometimes.

Thanks for the feedback Poplava. This was the winning contest entry for Oasiscircle's Game in a Week contest in August 2012.

I agree about the story text being too much. I'm working on keeping it short and sweet. I'm also considering getting a voice actor to do voice overs for people who might be too lazy to read even 3 or 4 lines of text.

I need to readjust spawning timers so that the zombies aren't waiting for you just as the first door opens.

I'm working on making the flashlight grow dimmer as you run out of energy. I might make it play some sound if it turns off the flashlight from running out of energy.

I'm also working on making the mission objectives more obvious. Pretty much: Keep the story text short and concise and make the objective HUD markers more obvious and easy to notice.

About flashlight auto-on, I was hoping that H for Help was pretty obvious. There's text indicating it on the lobby screen. I'm not sure how to make it more obvious (for people who don't know controls).
Additionally, there are flares in the starting room that can be used and carried by the players, in case there's a group of players and one wants to carry a flare for others to not need flashlights. This kind of makes flashlight auto-on at start a little inappropriate.

About the autostart for singleplayer: If all players click the checkmark on their player panel (so that all of the checkmarks are green), the start timer will reduce to 10 seconds. This also applies for singleplayer, just tick your checkmark when you're ready.

About the shooting: I'm not sure how to improve this without implementing aim assist. And aim assist can be very expensive computationally. The way the aiming works is you want your mouse cursor to be roughly chest level. This means chest level on the ghouls and about the same level for the skullfish. It is pixel precise and I don't think it has significant input lag unless you're playing over a network or unless your computer's internals consist of hamster wheels. The thing is, aiming at the chest level is apparently unintuitive. I have no idea how to improve this without aim assist.